I remember / je me souviens

I remember / je me souviens

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For those limbic bursts of nostalgia, invented by Proust, miniaturized by Nicholson Baker, and freeze-dried by Joe Brainard in his I remember and by Georges Perec in his Je me souviens.

But there are no fractions, the world is an integer
Like us, and like us it can neither stand wholly apart nor disappear.
When one is young it seems like a very strange and safe place,
But now that I have changed it feels merely odd, cold
And full of interest.
--John Ashbery, "A Wave"

Sometimes I sense that to put real confidence in my memory I have to get to the end of all rememberings. That seems to say that I forego remembering. And now that strikes me as an accurate description of what it is to have confidence in one's memory.
--Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason

Tuesday, March 18, 2003

I remember Eddie Giacomin coming within inches of being the first goalie ever to score in an NHL game. The other team had left their net empty in desperation to try and tie. Giacomin cleared the puck and it went ricochetting up-ice at a leasurely pace, just too fast to be chased down. It was so close -- and in the replays shown over and over it kept looking like it was going to go in.

I remember Giacomin didn't wear a mask, as most other goalies started doing so.

I remember Terry Sawchuck, and his last shut-out. It was his last season and he was Giacomin's back-up. I watched (on TV) the shutout.

I remember also the end of maybe the 1970 season, when the Rangers were tied with the Canadiens for points but behind in tie-breaking goals-for. Vachon and Dryden were the Canadiens goalies -- I think Sawchuck might have played his shutout against them. At any rate, with two games left in the season, the Rangers and Canadiens were battling for the fourth-place play-off spot. The Rangers lost the second to last game to the Red Wings, and would need to score at least five goals the next day -- and win -- in order to come out ahead of the Canadiens. The Red Wings made the playoffs -- or maybe clinched first place -- after winning that game. So apparently they all got massively drunk that night, and played terribly the next day. The Rangers were up 5-2 and pulled Giacomin, trying to score as much as possible. I remember Sawchuck and Giacomin sitting together on the bench, Sawchuck roaring with laughter Giacomin had been pulled when the Rangers were so far ahead. The Rangers won, and it all depended on what would happen that night; and then the Canadiens were creamed by the Black Hawks. They needed to score I think 5 goals to win in goals once it was clear that they would lose the game, and so they also pulled their goalie, when they were losing 5-2. But they ended up losing 10-2. They were very bitter about the Red Wings, and about their unprofessional hangovers. This was the first time since the forties the Canadiens hadn't made the playoffs. It might have been Vachon's last season.

I remember Rod Gilbert, and that he'd broken his back when he fell on some debris thrown on the ice by irate Ranger fans. I remember him saying in an interview that hockey was a much rougher game than football, but that people played it longer because it didn't damage your knees the way football did. (Which I knew about also from Joe Namath's famously fragile knees.)

I remember that Terry Sawchuck was killed in a fight with some other Rangers at a barbecue that summer.

posted by william 4:34 PM
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